Surviving Justice: Realities of Reporting Rape
Episodes
31 episodes
Follow Up: Restorative Justice
Welcome to Season 3: Follow Up! This first episode gives a basic overview of what restorative justice is within the context of sexual violence. I'll go over the basics, some common misconceptions, and some questions asked by listeners about who...
Follow Up: I May Destroy You & Address Confidentiality Programs
Vasha joins me today to talk about 'I May Destroy You', the series that wins all of the Golden Globes in our hearts. Michaela Coel's incredible series depicting the aftermath of surviving a drug-facilitated sexual assault in groundbreaking and ...
Follow Up: Kyle Richard
Kyle Richard stopped a sexual assault in progress and got shot two times for confronting the perpetrator. Now the former SUNY Cortland football player is dedicating his life to ending sexual violence and speaking out about gun violence. He has ...
Follow Up: Aarefah and Sayedah
Part 1 of 2: Aarefah and her sister Sayedah share their experiences with sexual harassment, discrimination based on race and religion, and Aarefah's sexual assault. Their stories exemplify how survivors are failed every step of the way while re...
Follow Up: Aarefah and Sayedah 2
Let's do a rape trial without using or defining the word "rape"! Sounds fair, right? Aarefah and her sister, Sayedah, are back for episode 2 of Aarefah's reporting and legal system experience. Clearly, it was amazing! Nothing sets up a fair and...
Follow Up: Abigail & SAAPM
Abigail from NC shares her activism as a secondary survivor and gives us all hope for the future. Learn about BLOOM365 and other amazing local and national organizations from a youth leader! Celebrate Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention M...
Follow Up: Taelor
Imagine being raped, the rapist agreeing to a plea deal and getting convicted, and then a judge "misfiling" some paperwork so that all that trauma only led to a rapist going free without a trace. Taelor tells the story of how this exact scenari...
Follow Up: Zahada, Krithi, Peace Corps & More
Zahada and Krithi joined me to discuss their powerful perspectives on sexual assault in the Peace Corps, experiences of BIPOC with Peace Corps and generally in society, and more. Follow them on social media: Zahada is on Instagram a...
Follow Up: Lauren of MeTooManyVoices
Lauren of MeTooManyVoices and I discuss all kinds of things re: healing. Join us for a chat about our thoughts on forgiveness, righteous anger, and a phrase that personally makes me want to vomit: 'Hurt people hurt people'. Like, unless y...
Prevention Mini-Series: Introduction
Welcome to Season 2! This season is different in tone and topic, focusing on sexual violence prevention, education, and awareness. The introductory episode will talk about future guests and will give an overview of what the current research is ...
Prevention Mini-Series: #2, Brenda Tracy
Brenda Tracy, RN, activist, speaker, and survivor joins for a talk about a lot of things! Hear her story, hear about her national Set The Expectation Campaign, why the Tracy Rule should be implemented everywhere, thoughts of restorative justice...
Prevention Mini-Series: #3, Kip Ioane/Teams of Men
Basketball coach Kip Ioane of Willamette University joins this week to talk about Teams of Men, his business with curriculum for athletes. Teams of Men is a curriculum made for male athletes to challenge long-held stereotypes and beliefs that u...
Prevention Mini-Series: #4, Mike Domitrz
Mike Domitrz discusses his sexual violence prevention work that details consent, respect, awareness and education. We talk about being a secondary survivor and the impact that sexual violence has on families and communities of survivors. He als...
Prevention Mini-Series: #5, M. Colleen McDaniel
M. Colleen McDaniel discusses her research on perpetrators of sexual violence, because you can't really stop rape without addressing the root cause: rapists. Learn about the Social Norms Approach, causal factors to perpetration, and a ton of in...
1: "The Only Thing That's Uniform is Nothing Happens to the Perpetrator": What's the Problem?
What happens when you pick up the phone or go to the hospital and decide to report rape? No, really- what comes next? Will your rapist go to jail, or will your detective refer to the strangulation mark on your neck as a "hickey" in his report?<...
2: "The Very Characteristics of the Crime are the Same Factors That Lead People to Doubt the Legitimacy of a Report": Investigations, Pt. 1- Victim Blaming, Trauma, & Patrol Officers
Why are some sexual assaults never disclosed, or disclosed after a delay? How does the first response a survivor receives determine their long-term wellbeing, their likelihood to tell others, their likelihood to report to law enforcement, and t...
3: "Is Being Naked in Someone Else's Apartment and Eating, is That Something You Would Normally Do?": Investigations, Pt. 2- Detective Interviews & Confrontation Calls
On to the next phase of reporting rape: being interviewed by a detective. Will he or she have training in how to do this? It's not a requirement, so who knows! Listen to hear what kind of questions detectives might ask, what they are looking fo...
4: "Find Your Justice Elsewhere." - Investigations, Part 3: Follow Up
What does follow-up investigating look like in sexual assault cases? What are expectations we have vs. reality? Helpful hint: the difference is stark. Hear from those who are doing it right, and hear from those who have been f...
5: “If We Thought We Had Probable Cause Enough to Prove Beyond a Reasonable Doubt…”: Investigations, Part 4 - No One Knows What 'Probable Cause' Is
What is probable cause? According to the law, a 51% benchmark. According to some captains in police departments, it's somewhere between 70% and beyond a reasonable doubt. In this episode, we talk through investigations from the stand point of p...
6: "One Victim is Really Ten": Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault
Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault. How common is it? How do we dispel myths that the victim was just 'mistaken'? The answers are scarier than you'd think.Find Keith Graves, Drug Recognition Expert and all around amazing investigator's web...
7: "It's a Question of How Honest You're Gonna Be With the Public About How Few of Them You're Solving." - Exceptional Clearance
Exceptional Clearance: What is it? It's supposed to be a last resort option when an arrest can't be made, but in practice, it's used far more frequently than intended. It negatively impacts victims and rape investigations. Listen along with inv...
8-"You Are Free to Rape, Because We Think It's Pretty Hard to Prove These Cases": Prosecutorial Decision-Making
What factors go into the decisions that prosecutors make about whether or not to try sexual assault cases? Less than 1% of sexual assaults are tried nationally each year. Hear all of the excuses about why that is.
9- "Normal Responses to an Abnormal Situation": The Impact of Trauma
We already talked about trauma and survival instincts in the moment of the assault, but what happens to the brain in the days and weeks after the assault, and long-term? In what ways might it change a person short- and long-term? How does being...
10- "We Respect Their Autonomy & Want Them to Be in Control": The Sexual Assault Examination Kit
What happens during a Sexual Assault Examination to collect and preserve evidence? How much control does a victim have over what happens- from contacting the police to giving blood samples? According to published best practices: all of it. Dr. ...
11: The “Backlog”: A Rant
The backlog is a decades-long police failure that they are now unjustly taking credit for fixing. DNA only counts when it is tied to other DNA found in CODIS after years of not arresting rapists, apparently. Victims voices are never enough unle...